brave; and if she were not so brave, he could not love her half so
much." And stooping, the noble chief kissed and kissed the maiden's
forehead; and then, once, and very tenderly, her two red lips.

The pair now swiftly returned to the hollow, once again folded the
tent, closed their hamper, saddled the horses, and struck out swiftly
for the trail. They had practised eyes, and were soon convinced that
both parties had gone by this route. Their horses were fairly fresh
and they pushed on at high speed.

Their course lay over a long stretch of sodden marshes, brown with
the russet of Indian pipes and the bronze of their leafage. Here and
there a dry ridge lifted itself lazily out of the spongy flat, and
afforded solid, buoyant footing. But a dull gray began to fall upon
the plains. It was fog and they knew that less than half an hour of
clear skies, and the sight of landscape, remained to them. So they
sped on, now sinking deep in a mass of sodden liverwort, glistening
in the most exquisite of green, again treading down a tangle of
luscious, pale-yellow "bake-apples." The huge, noiseless mass soon
reached the swampy plain; and it rolled as if upon wheels of floss,
shutting out the sun and smothering the bluffs. The gloom was now so
great that they could not see more than twenty paces on any hand, and
every object in view seemed many times greater than its natural size,
and distorted in shape. Miles and miles they went through swamp and
tangle, till they heard the far-off, sullen roar of water. The land
now also began to dip, and fifteen minutes' ride brought them to a
low-lying region of swamp, sentinelled with dismal larches. Close at
hand they heard the moaning of a slow stream; beyond was the muffled
thunder of some tremendous waterfall. They were soon convinced that
they were on the confines of the Styx River, a dreary, forbidding